


The Ballad of Me and My Brain

by pukeytyler (cherryblur)



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: 1970s, Derogatory Language, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Tourette's Syndrome, Unethical Experimentation, Wheelchairs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-21 14:01:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18143135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryblur/pseuds/pukeytyler
Summary: Tyler can walk.Tyler can fucking walk.





	The Ballad of Me and My Brain

**Author's Note:**

> hello again

“Stop it. Stop, Josh,” He spits. He always spits. When he’s not thrashing or banging his wrist against his chest, he’s spitting words. 

Or saliva. Either way he’s offending. 

“I can fucking walk,” He snarls, and wishes he could punch something but the stupid braces buckled around his uncertain hands prevent him from doing so. 

His head jerks to the side and he snuffles in the middle of calling Josh a cunt. 

Josh doesn’t argue. “Get in the chair, please. Tyler.” 

Tyler stumbles back on his squeaky black sneakers and his body twitches, head frozen to the right for far too long.  
“Fuck you,” He quips to the wall. 

He will not get in the wheelchair.  
He’s not disabled. He’s not crippled.

Josh tells him it’s too high of a risk for him to walk around. He doesn’t have his meds and his tic attacks are getting even worse.  
But his attitude is just as bad. 

“Bullshit,” Is Tyler’s answer. He can walk fine. 

“I don’t want to call Michael,” Josh tells him tiredly. “Please, Tyler.” 

Tyler shouts incoherence at him and his legs kick out from underneath him. He bangs his brace-covered fist against his chest. 

Faster, stronger, they’re progressing into something bad. He’s angry. 

“Call Michael,” He giggles. It’s a challenge, a game he likes to play until the bitter end.  
“Fuck-biscuit! You, Josh.”

Josh can still take offense even when a tic gets in the way. He doesn’t though, because he’s heard worse spew from those pink venom lips. 

Tyler sneezes three times in succession and Michael is striding through their front doorway in minutes.  
Tyler curses how good he is at his job. 

“No.” 

His body jerks and shakes and he refuses when his scrawny little shoulders are being pressed forward until he’s forced down into the chair.  
Michael is used to his flailing, mostly because he’s supposed to be the (strong) at-home nurse that deals with Tyler’s episodes. 

Tyler doesn’t have episodes, he thinks.  
His mind runs in third person, because that’s how everyone else talks about him. 

He’s weak and little, but that doesn’t mean he can’t mix purposeful blows in with the tics flying crazily at the moment.  
His leg kicks out and bruises Michael’s shin and he doesn’t feel bad. 

He hates this chair. It’s rickety and hurts just about everywhere it touches. He wishes he could burn it. Josh won’t let him smoke cigarettes. 

Then he cries when Josh buckles him in and hates himself. His legs are strapped down, and he knows if he tries anymore to fight his arms will be too. 

His stupid hands rest quietly in his lap.  
His braces are blue, and he likes that sometimes. Even though they hurt his wrists. 

“I don’t want to go,” He sniffles like a child, and that makes him sneeze four times in a row. His body apparently can’t find the will for verbal tics and instead he twitches to the left side for much too long. 

Josh doesn’t give him a passing pity glance even for a second and wheels him out like a burden. 

He’s quiet, toes moving a million miles an hour in his shoes. The holes in the sides let him see his red socks that poke through. It’s calming, for a second. 

He wants to run away. 

But instead he’s clamped in a stupid wheelchair with stupid hand braces and tear tracks drying on his cheeks. 

Everyone’s gonna think he’s a special kid for sure.  
He’s not disabled. 

“I’m not disabled,” He shouts his opinion when they’re rolling him down the sidewalk street. It feels like he’s got a trillion eyes on him. 

Josh doesn’t say a word but he can feel the sigh he exudes. 

“Where are we going?” He hiccups, eyes flicking up, down, side to side, just about everywhere they shouldn’t be. He looks like a very curious tourist. 

Sometimes he gets sad looks from pedestrians so he laughs. 

Josh doesn’t answer him. 

So it’s the doctor’s office. 

The doctor’s, where he’ll be poked and prodded and laid down on a cold metal table that makes him thrash and kick. 

Because he’s a freak of nature. 

He threatens to have an attack, but knows it’ll have him in the same place if it’s successful. 

He can’t force them anyways. 

Instead he’s as quiet as he can be, and when they’re crossing the threshold of the man who calls himself Dr. Urie Tyler starts to cry again. 

“Josh, I wanna go home,” He says through ugly sobs. He doesn’t have many verbal tics, but if he did they’d be wild right now. 

Instead his body makes up for it.  
He’s smacking his chest more times than he can count, head jerking to the side while he whines and begs Josh to take him back home. 

_Tyler doesn’t deserve this_ , he thinks and his brain agrees. He hates seeing kids stare, gaping and confused while their mothers yank them away because he’s ‘unpredictable.’ 

Sometimes he feels Josh doesn’t even love him. He’s just a burden. 

_He’s just sick_ , the doctors tell him after he curses and punches and eventually gets a threat of anesthesia to knock him out cold.

He’s just sick. Sick when they poke needles through his skin and force medications down his throat and force his limbs to go directions they don’t want to.

He’s taken to heat therapy, where his skin is burned in an attempt to ‘fix’ his retard muscles. He heard Josh use that word today and cries the whole time.

He’s like a national treasure, so weird and odd, unlike any NORMAL human. He hears one of the nurses whisper about how he’d fit into a freak show smoothly.

He accidentally kicks her very hard.

”I’m not deaf,” He reminds them when he’s laying helpless. “I’m not stupid. I’m not retarded. I’m not disabled.” Then he snuffs and his dumb head jerks so fast he thinks he’ll get whiplash.

They laugh at him.

The doctor tells Josh Tyler is very, very sick.

 _Yeah, I’m sick_ , he tells them with a laugh through all his tears.  
_Sick in the head._

**Author's Note:**

> “your life will be very, very difficult,” she tells him with a smile that seemed even more so.  
> “but i believe in you.” 
> 
> and tyler found his favorite nurse.


End file.
